


Havana Night

by FakeCirilla9



Category: 20th Century CE RPF, Political RPF - Latin America
Genre: Crack, Dubious Ethics, F/M, Historical Accuracy, M/M, Revolutionaries In Love, Somewhat, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:13:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26437750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FakeCirilla9/pseuds/FakeCirilla9
Summary: A triumphant night in Havana after the revolution was won
Relationships: Ernesto "Che" Guevara/Aleida March, Fidel Castro & Raúl Castro, Fidel Castro/Ernesto "Che" Guevara
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Havana Night

**Author's Note:**

> I am not sure about posting this work. I have read some great fics concerning these people, as well as some terrible ones. I hope this story falls somewhere in the middle, at least.
> 
> It is heavily inspired by Aleida March's book, ["Remembering Che..."](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13236911-remembering-che) and written in the tone of comedy. But is it enough to excuse using real biographies?
> 
> People referred in here inspire many contradicting opinions: some see them as heroes, other as the bad guys. I didn't want for this story to lean towards either side of the dispute. It is merely an expression of what I see in the photos of Che and Fidel together, poured onto the paper.

The revolution succeeded. Havana streets resounded with series from rifles, mingling with fireworks' explosions. Fidel Castro's voice carried over the heads of the exhilarated crowd from any radio receiver in the city.

Raúl stormed into the radiostation with a bottle in hand.

"Brother!"

Fidel covered the microphone and turned it off hastily at the disruption. He looked at his younger sibling, cross.

"Don't you see you're interrupting something important?" he snapped.

Che didn't comment, he just observed how the events would unfold from the chair he occupied, sitting on it with one leg drawn up.

"Brother, you won't guess what we found!" Raúl was not baffled in the slightest. He seemed inebriated with how loud and openly he spoke. "Batista's wine cellar! Come on, guys," he eyed the two men in the room, "you're missing on a party. People lit bonfires at the beach."

Fidel looked at Che. His friend seemed eager enough but as a token protest, he said: "Isn't your brother's speech more important than getting drunk at the moment?

Raúl rolled his eyes.

"You cavemen. Technology exists for a reason," he explained with all the confidence of a drunk person. "Just record the speech and put it on a loop. You're talking the same thing over and over anyway."

Fidel frowned at that but before he could argue, Che clapped him on the back.

"That's a great idea," he said, smiling too widely and Fidel was sure he's laughing from the insolent brat's joke.

They ended up on the beach, of course.

  
Raúl was not done with his initial victory, though. Not even when each of them held a bottle of some ridiculously expensive wine, with an inarticulate name, in hand and they sat on the sand, in a circle of light and heat that emanated from one of the bonfires.

"What else Batista had left behind, I wonder," Raúl was saying in a tone that indicated clearly he was heading somewhere. "He disappeared so quickly after all without even waiting to say us farewell."

Fidel smiled. It was either alcohol or his brother's jokes were getting better.

"Expensive cars, all furniture, some paintings," Raúl enumerated aloud, "women, jewerly... Women! That's it, comrades. Do you think Americans left their ladies, of easy virtue, behind?"

"You mean local girls forced into prostitution?" Che asked sharply. "And you would exploit them as the capitalists did?" 

"Why calling it exploitation? Such an awful word for so sweet a thing. We will bring them the happy news! Liberate them. And if the ladies will decide to reward us for our merits," Raúl's voice turned dreamy, "who are we to oppose the fairer sex?"

Fidel liked the idea more and more. Even Che started to smile. But then another interruption put an end to their vaguely drafted plans. It came at them like a hurricane in a rainy season despite its lithe form outlined dark against the fire as the girl in military clothes stood astride before them and put her hands on her hips. 

"You bastards," she said without any preliminary, "wives away at homes so you plan to go to the whores? What can be more important in a day we won the revolution if not a visit to a brothel! Men," the last word was spat as if it was a mortal insult.

Raúl wisely retreated to the background, mumbling excuses of being free as the bird and flying away. Fidel looked at Aleida crossly. Che was already staring blatantly up at her, not registering the world beside the fearsome youth. So much for spending time in his friend's company, Fidel mused.

"Are you spying on me?" Che asked.

Fidel felt an urge to hit his head against something but from the lack of suitable surfaces he settled for taking a long gulp from his bottle as Che assassinated his could-be romance. Everyone in the partisan army knew he pined over her. Everyone knew she pined over him. And yet the two of them were the only ones unable to see that their feelings for each other were reciprocated. 

"Spying?" the girl snorted, "as if! You're not that interesting. I have more important things to do than running after you."

"For example?"

"Celebrating the victory," she threw up her hand.

"Then come drink to it," Che waved his bottle tantalizingly.

Fidel wouldn't fall for it, seeing the glint in his eyes but Aleida either knew him too little or was more insidious than Fidel gave her credits for. The moment she bent to take a grip of the bottle, Che grabbed her outstretched hand and pulled her down towards his lap, pressing to his chest as she struggled to free herself.

"Let me go, you brute, who do you think I am. I'm a partisan and I demand-"

"Oh, really? And how many servants of the previous system have you killed, partisan?" Che spoke in a tone of a good natured joke, which only irritated the girl further.

"That is of no matter! The messengers are important too!"

"Stop angering her, Che," Fidel decided to step in. He wasn't that pleased that she joined them but he was a true friend. It would be stupid to argue about a matter as trivial as women. This aspect changed with years and locations while Che remained the only constant in his life.

"Why? She's so pretty when she's angry," Che answered Fidel but he looked at Aleida while speaking this.

That snapped the last straw. Aleida bent swiftly and clenched her teeth on the forearm that held her pressed flush to Che. Che cursed but he must have loosened his grip as she freed herself in one fluid movement. She glanced back to where Che was massaging his hand.

"Does it hurt?" she asked and Fidel could hear a genuine concern in her words.

"A bit," Che shuffled closer to her. He rolled up his sleeve to show the damage and Fidel wondered for the umpteenth time in his life what the women saw in his comrade. He himself would never show such a weakness before any human being even if it was getting laid oriented.

Aleida touched Che's skin gently, examining the wound in the firelight. Che sent Fidel a triumphant stare over her bent head. Fidel shook his head and put his mouth to his bottle again.

"Oh, I actually drew blood... I didn't plan to be this harsh... But it is all your fault in the first place."

"I think it will hurt less if you kissed it."

Aleida looked at him, sweetly no doubt judging by the way Che's eyes creased in a self pleased smile.

"I have a better idea," the girl said pleasantly and quicker than Che could react she took the wine from his hand and poured the remnants of the drink over his hurt hand.

Now he hissed in pain as the alcohol reacted with the open wound. Fidel was torn between sympathy and dark satisfaction.

"It will prevent possible infection," Aleida explained merrily. "And help you remember how to treat a woman, hopefully." She straightened up and marched off.

Che followed her with his eyes until the slim silhouette diffused in the crowd of drunkards, soldiers and dancing locals.

"I have no idea what I do wrong," Che commented sadly.

Fidel uttered a strangled noise. Che whirled back towards him.

"What?"

Fidel didn't have a heart to answer him truthfully for it would have to be something along the lines of 'everything'. He conceived another approach.

"Allow me to show you how it should go," he said and went to sit next to his friend.

"You must be confident," Fidel started. "Women like that. Get close to her, touch her, like that." Visualizing the advice, Fidel threw an arm over Che's shoulders.

Che looked at him which brought their faces very close to each other.

"That's what I did," he pointed out.

"Not overly confident, though" clarified Fidel. "Not everything at once. A subtle touch," he stroked Che's arm as an example. Che glanced at his hand but didn't protest. "Make her crave more." 

"Okay. What then?"

"Tell her nice things. Women love compliments."

"I told her she's pretty," Che protested.

"You told her she's pretty when she's angry. That's not what I mean. It must be a wholly positive comment."

"Like what?" Che demanded, searching Fidel's face for an answer.

"You have a beautiful smile." Fidel said.

Che laughed which made him look like Fidel preferred the most: young and careless and beautiful. Fidel leaned closer, pressing a kiss to his mouth. 

Che stilled in his arms but didn't try to withdraw. Fidel broke the kiss and moved somewhat back never breaking their eye contact. 

"And kiss her when she least expects it," Fidel finished. "She's less likely to refuse you then."

Che's eyes were dark and widened in surprise and some indescribable feeling that wasn't repulsion for sure. Curiosity? Lust?

"And then she's yours, I assume?" asked Che in a much lower voice than before.

"All yours," agreed Fidel. "Ready to give herself to you."

Che leaned closer to him.

"I think, since none of our ladies wants our company tonight, that we should celebrate the victory together. Just the two of us."

His voice carried an obvious intent but Fidel stopped him, placing a hand at his breast. 

"Not here, too many people around," he explained, indicating the drunken crowd, whose shouts and laughs created a constant buzz in the background.

"Batista's residence, then?" proposed Che with a crooked smile.

"And what about your principles?" Fidel teased him with a pretended indignation. "You roared up Enrique for converting a car from some clerk while you yourself want a real estate?"

"That's an entirely different thing. We won't own it. Just borrow it for a night."

  
The residence was full of luxury and so spacious one may got lost in it.

"Why would anyone need so many bedrooms?"

"Maybe each was for a separate lover?"

Che laughed.

Eventually, they settled for a room with windows facing west so the sun wouldn't wake them up too quickly in the morning. Fidel led the way, Che followed eagerly. He has always been a quick learner, picked up things immediately, to the extent that some considered him better than Fidel in military operations. And it wasn't limited to the battlefield, it seemed.

Perhaps Fidel should be jealous over how people were drawn to this man, how they loved him, maybe more than Fidel himself. But Fidel, as much as he protected his position of an opposition leader from others, could not see Che as a threat. Che has never once tried to usurp his place.

Even in this, the most primal thing, Che was all right with handing him a power over himself. It had to be honest. Che always was. The role of a second seemed to suit him perfectly.

"Come back to me," demanded Che from beneath him, sprawled on the opulent bed covers and pulling Fidel closer. "Where were you? Your wife's embrace?" 

Fidel kissed him to shut him up. Mentions of his crumbling marriage were annoying. The lighter shade on Che's finger left by the wedding ring lost somewhere on the island – Fidel couldn't see it now but he knew it was there – was equally aggravating. All the young girls in the city they victoriously marched into, making sweet eyes at Che and not him were irritating. But none of these constituted a reason for true jealousy. Che was his and always will be. No matter how many women he had, no matter if he helped any other country politically – no one would share the same level of intimacy with his comandante as he did.

He touched Che's cheek, caressed the smooth skin above the facial hair as the eyes made black by the darkness stared up at him. They burned with the same fire that had captivated Fidel so long ago upon their first encounter when Raúl had dragged him to meet his new friend; Fidel had not expected these levels of passion from a scholar then. Even now, when he saw what his revolutionary was capable of, Che sometimes surprised him with a daring idea.

"I want to try something," Che shifted beneath him, grabbed him at the hip and a shoulder and Fidel found himself flipped over, pressed down by the weight of another man.

"Never took you for the one who'd like to be on top," teased Fidel desperately trying to stay fully aware even as pleasure clouded his mind.

"You never took me for the one who could kill a man either."

"You're full of surprises," panted Fidel. "My soldier, my commandant, my man."

He touched him and Che shuddered above him. One hand clenched Fidel's arm with a strength that'd left marks no doubt. An attempt to steady himself served only to push them both further, where the ecstasy blurred into oblivion and the world receded from reality around them. Fidel dimly could feel the hotness of another body pressed to his.

  
He woke to an empty bed. As soon as his half asleep mind registered the situation, Fidel drew himself promptly up to a sitting position. 

"Steady, you're among friends. I doubt any enemy would dare to approach us right now."

Not his words so much but rather the fact Che was there still made Fidel's muscles relax. Fidel studied Che's naked form standing beside the window, outlined by the weak light of the moon. He turned to him and Fidel saw a cigar in his mouth. Che flashed him a smile without releasing the tobacco. Fidel could feel his mouth salivating.

"How-" his voice cracked from sleep.

Che took out the cigar and puffed out an aromatic cloud of smoke. 

"Left to the bed. First drawer."

Fidel found a silver case, took one parejo and cut the end with practiced movements. Che came closer, offering a glowing cedar stick.

"You've made yourself at home, hm?"

"I've researched the enemy territory," Che corrected, getting back in the bed.

Fidel drew on a cigar and leaned back against the pillows. The bed was big enough to accommodate them both without having to even brush shoulders.

"I could get used to it," Fidel stated, blowing out the smoke. 

"Don't," said Che. "So many rooms may be put to a better use than housing one man. A few families could live here instead. Or we could transform it to a makeshift hospital with this many beds."

Fidel sighed but didn't voice any protest. Che was right. He nearly always was. Maybe that was the only flaw of his friend. Fidel glanced at him, moving a strand of dark hair behind his ear to better see his face. Che looked at him questioningly. 

"You're a unique man."

"I thought compliments were due only before getting laid," Che smiled.

"Never too many of them," Fidel explained. "But that was not flattery but a sheer truth."


End file.
